Two weeks at site and it´s been good. I´m not doing a whole lot at the moment it terms of work. Mostly, I´ve been hanging around the office to get to know everyone. However, I did spend one day planting an another working with the tea processing machines. Come next week, I will begin on some family garden projects.

At the moment, I´m renting an apartment in Chamelco, a small town about 15 minutes from Coban by bus and about 15 minutes on foot from the cooperative. My rational for living in Chamelco was that it was a nice small and quiet place where I could walk to work. However, the first two weeks have changed that image somewhat. For one, my room is right next to the Cathedral. Unlike most churches I´ve known, mass is celebrated here daily at 5AM with marimba music, bass and bells. Moreover, my backdoor is visited every morning by a particularly vocal rooster. I´ve gotten used to it by now, but the first few nights I spent awake in bed scheming about how I was going to kill the rooster. Had I not gotten used to him, I think a machete would have been involved in the solution.

Also, I started Q´echki classes this week in Coban. It´s pretty crazy to be starting from zero on a language. However, most of the old volunteers managed to get a handle on it. The instructor is great and I´m pretty excited to start speaking the language on the cooperative. It´s a great confidence builder. I should be fairly busy with language for the next couple months. Come mid-January, classes start and I´ll be busy with the schools.